Despite their antirationalist position, however, most existentialists
cannot be said to be irrationalists in the sense of denying all
validity to rational thought. They have held that rational clarity is
desirable wherever possible, but that the most important questions in
life are not accessible to reason or science. Furthermore, they have
argued that even science is not as rational as is commonly supposed.
Nietzsche, for instance, asserted that the scientific assumption of an
orderly universe is for the most part a useful fiction.
http://www.helsinki.fi/~mqsalo/documents/existe.htm
It was Merleau-Ponty's contention that science and too much
abstraction had resulted in a philosophical tendency to reduce every
phenomena, every object, every person to nothing more than collected
data. Merleau-Ponty believed that philosophers had a duty to relate
things as they were viewed, not as science described them.
"We must return to the Lebenswelt, the world in which we meet in the
lived-in experience, our immediate experience of the world."
http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/merleau.asp
Existentialism is about re-defining yourself in an increasingly absurd
world as defined for you by the traditions of science, philosophy and
religion; you cannot help but feel alien to it. Others cannot tell
you who or what you are, or what your existence should mean to you.
Only you can determine what you can be for yourself, as opposed to
what others want you to be. For this you must look at yourself not
through the eyes of others, but from yourself, from the inside out –
from within the acute reality of your own cognitive and spiritual
existence. But this is no easy task – it means assuming responsibility
for all your actions as you attempt to recreate yourself from the
subjective contents of your stream of consciousness. It will require
courage – the courage to invent oneself without being plugged into a
god, a scientific assumption or the beliefs of society at large for
confirmation that you are doing the right thing. It may lead to
anguish and despair, for to decide for oneself is to decide for the
whole of human reality, for this is your reality also.
http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/cree/
...[W]ith respect to the first point, that existence is particular,
Existentialism is opposed to any doctrine that views man as the
manifestation of an absolute or of an infinite substance. It is thus
opposed to most forms of Idealism, such as those that stress
Consciousness, Spirit, Reason, Idea, or Oversoul. Secondly, it is
opposed to any doctrine that sees in man some given and complete
reality that must be resolved into its elements in order to be known
or contemplated. It is thus opposed to any form of objectivism or
scientism since these stress the crass reality of external fact.
Thirdly, Existentialism is opposed to any form of necessitarianism;
for existence is constituted by possibilities from among which man may
choose and through which he can project himself. And, finally, with
respect to the fourth point, Existentialism is opposed to any
solipsism (holding that I alone exist) or any epistemological Idealism
(holding that the objects of knowledge are mental), because existence,
which is the relationship with other beings, always extends beyond
itself, toward the being of these entities; it is, so to speak,
transcendence.
http://existentialism.britannica.com/
The campaign carried on against "metaphysics" so frequent in the
empiricist tradition is not only an argument against methods that
refuse to remain open to testing (an argument connected to the very
methodological commitment of empiricism), but is also an argument
against unwitting scientism, which does not ignore science (or at
least science of the past) but arbitrarily uses its results without
taking into account the intrinsic procedures that guarantee them to
some degree.
http://www.nicolaabbagnano.it/archivio_di/a_6.htm
"Were we capable of keeping . . . science . . . in its place, there
would be no problem, but the triumphs of science have been too
impressive to allow this. Method has mushroomed into metaphysics,
science into scientism, the latter defined as the drawing of
conclusions from science that do not logically follow. . . . Scientism
is a mark of our times, one we are all victims of and responsible for:
in Descartes's fall, we sinned all."
http://www.wie.org/j11/huston.asp
But if:
Existentialism [is] the belief that one shapes one's basic nature
through the direction of life one chooses to live.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Essays/glossary.html
Then I should modify my position to "at least some existentialists are
more skeptical of science than the common lot of man"
Scientism: the notion that the methods and theories of the physical
and biological sciences are just as suitable and vital to the
humanities and social sciences. Holding to the primacy of science over
religious, mythical, or spiritual interpretations of life.
